Shifting
Red-brick turns to asphalt, strip centers as places of false refuge,
dirty devotions to objects, not people–
Who do you love? Who do you cherish?
In summers with my brown mom, there were no trips
to the beach or mountains.
We drove to the mall, the Subaru’s pleather seats my cloth mother
while she left me in the racks.
The grocery store stands in afternoon light under whole skies
the color of flint, an unlikely place of revival.
I race to the conveyor belt, bag oranges as bright as noonday suns,
cartons of oat milk, boxes of spinach, face obscured like Ophelia.
The young Black woman eyes me calmly, loves herself enough
to look at me and say–
Good thing this isn’t a race, and laughter explodes out of us. I’m freed
from the hungry ghost, her warm presence a nebula of peace.
Mother left me stranded in the dark, used her knife of words to lacerate,
forced her lustful eyes into the fabric of my dreams.
But the goddess held me, cared for my goods like she birthed the stars.
O divinity of trees, maker of women and kindness–
Let me love pure like the Nubian queen, flow like river water
softening sharp edges into stone, starlight traveling into this heart,
this swirling, sprawling galaxy of song.